Margarethe von Trotta was born in Berlin in 1942. In the 1960s she moved to Paris where she worked for film collectives, collaborating on scripts and co-directing short films. She also pursued an acclaimed acting career, starring in films by well known German directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder , and Volker Schlöndorff . In 1971, von Trotta divorced her first husband Juergen Moeller (with whom she had a child) and married Schlöndorff. She co-wrote many of the scripts for his films, and in 1975 the two of them co-directed Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann (1975). In 1977, von Trotta directed her first solo feature Das zweite Erwachen der Christa Klages (1978) (The Second Awakening of Christa Klages). With her third film, Die bleierne Zeit (1981), von Trotta's position as New German Cinema's most prominent and successful female filmmaker was fully secured. Her films feature strong female protagonists, and are usually set against an important political background. Themes in her work include the effect of the political on the personal, and vice versa, as well as the relationships between female characters, often sisters.
Has a son, Felix, with Jürgen Moeller.Daughter of Alfred Roloff, a painter.After studying art, germanistics and Roman languages in Düsseldorf and Munich, she attended acting lessons.Resides in Paris.Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1980.Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1995.
A look at the life of philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who reported for The New Yorker on the war crimes trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.